Modeling the lowest-cost splitting of a herd of cows by optimizing a cost function
Animals live in groups to defend against predation and to obtain food. However, for some animals --- especially ones that spend long periods of time feeding --- there are costs if a group chooses to move on before their nutritional needs are satisfied. If the conflict between feeding and keeping up with a group becomes too large, it may be advantageous to some animals to split into subgroups of animals with similar nutritional needs. We model the costs and benefits of splitting by a herd of cows using a cost function (CF) that quantifies individual variation in hunger, desire to lie down, and predation risk. We model the costs associated with hunger and lying desire as the standard deviations of individuals within a group, and we model predation risk as an inverse exponential function of group size. We minimize the cost function over all plausible groups that can arise from a given herd and study the dynamics of group splitting. We explore our model using two examples: (1) we consider group switching and group fission in a herd of relatively homogeneous cows; and (2) we examine a herd with an equal number of adult males (larger animals) and adult females (smaller animals).
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
Automatic Retrieval of Specific Cows from Unlabeled Videos
Few automated video systems are described in the open literature that enable hands-free cataloging and identification (ID) of cows in a dairy herd. In this work, we describe our system, composed of an AutoCattloger, whic…
Prediction of Herd Life in Dairy Cows Using Multi-Head Attention Transformers
Dairy farmers should decide to keep or cull a cow based on an objective assessment of her likely performance in the herd. For this purpose, farmers need to identify more resilient cows, which can cope better with farm co…
T-LEAP: Occlusion-robust pose estimation of walking cows using temporal information
As herd size on dairy farms continues to increase, automatic health monitoring of cows is gaining in interest. Lameness, a prevalent health disorder in dairy cows, is commonly detected by analyzing the gait of cows. A co…
Animal Pose EstimationPose EstimationMiCull2 -- simulating mastitis transmission through milking order
Contagious mastitis pathogens can be transmitted through milking. However, previously published simulation models, such as MiCull, have not directly taken this into account. We have reimplemented the MiCull model to mode…
Machine Learning Approaches to Predict and Detect Early-Onset of Digital Dermatitis in Dairy Cows using Sensor Data
The aim of this study was to employ machine learning algorithms based on sensor behavior data for (1) early-onset detection of digital dermatitis (DD); and (2) DD prediction in dairy cows. With the ultimate goal to set-u…
DiagnosticManagementOnset Detection